It's funny you see filing patents as evidence of innovation when I see it as precisely the opposite.

I'm not sure how else you can really define innovation in a concrete fashion. Patents aren't exciting, but they're the end product of employing thousands of researchers and and spending billions equipping them.

Researchers, or lawyers?

The patent thing is just another of the shenanigans of IBM, the company pays you a premium if you get a patent approved and people just patent away whatever shitty thing they invent to get that incentive. It is just a numbers game that they use to have some nice KPI to say at their earnings call, but investors are not taking that anymore. Just look at IBM market cap evolution and you'll see how little value those patents bring to the company.